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Race-team owner Chip Ganassi is a Roger Penske of his generation in terms of his influence on motor racing. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Ganassi is the king of the Laurel Hill Tunnel

Ask Chip Ganassi to name some things the typical race fan doesn't know about him, and he'll give it a good shot.

“I have some other shirts that aren't white,” he offers. It's droll, referencing his unwavering race-weekend uniform of ball cap, dark jeans and a white, long-sleeve, button-down shirt. The lingering image of Ganassi might be him atop his race-control pit box, smiling his smirky grin down at TV pit reporters, answering questions about Dario Franchitti's fuel strategy or Juan Pablo Montoya's cut tire in a gruff, western-Pennsylvania twang.

If Ganassi comes off as arrogant, that's not precisely accurate. He's arguably the most successful race-team owner of his generation and patron of some of the most successful drivers, yet he keeps his ego in check as well as any. He's particularly magnanimous this afternoon, days after Franchitti collected Ganassi Racing's fourth win in the Indianapolis 500. He keeps trying to answer.

“I don't like annoying journalists asking silly questions.” Not as funny, Chip. Everyone already knows that. He starts again, stops before more words leave his mouth, then says: “Can't you scratch that question?”

OK, Chip. You don't like talking about Chip.

Guess we'll come up with some things the typical race fan might not know about you.

At the end of the day ...

Ganassi entered NASCAR in 2001 and got driver Sterling Marlin to third in the final Cup standings that year. He's won 16 races, including big ones like Daytona, and appeared on the verge again when Montoya made the Chase for the Championship in 2009. Yet 12 seasons into his Cup run, Ganassi hasn't come close to the results he's achieved everywhere else. What's up with that?

“We've been successful, more so than a lot of operations who have been in the series longer,” Ganassi notes. “It's certainly the most difficult series we're in, for achieving performance and the level of competition. We've had to make some philosophy changes over the years based on what we've learned.

“The financial crisis took two years out of our program down there. It took a lot out of us that the manufacturers were

struggling, and no one was sure who was in and who was out. We had to lay off some very good people.

“And that might be the biggest problem—expansion. No matter how many teams there are in Major League Baseball, there is the same number of elite pitchers. There are only so many quality people to operate these race teams, and until you reach some critical mass that I hope we're approaching, people don't know how committed you are. In some quarters, I am still an interloper in the South, and that makes it harder to attract those elites.

“There isn't a club, per se, but success and maybe longevity reward you. If you are that elite employee, and you have a choice of Ganassi or Hendrick, it's human nature to weigh past success.”

All that said, Ganassi is convinced he will achieve something Penske is still chasing: a championship in NASCAR's premier series.

“I'll be in longer than it takes to win one, but we will win one,” he says. “This is all I have.”

“No,” he answers. “When I'm 85, that's not what I want people to say. I hope they say, 'He was a good guy for racing. He took care of the sport.'”

The Laurel Hill Tunnel in Pennsylvania is Ganassi's secret test lab.

Ganassi is the Roger Penske of this generation in racing

Ganassi's so-called secret tunnel is like a rolling-road wind tunnel, only full-scale, cheaper and better. It surfaced sometime in 2009, after a hiker snapped pictures of new infrastructure at the ends of the Laurel Hill Tunnel—a previously abandoned, roughly one-mile Pennsylvania Turnpike bore under the border of Westmoreland and Somerset counties.

By then, Ganassi had long since repaved the tunnel and equipped it with climate control, safety equipment and data-collection systems. It allows limitless aerodynamic testing in controlled temperatures, free of wind, with a full-size race car traveling at speed. It joins the best elements of real straight-line testing and a conventional wind tunnel.

Ganassi first used the Laurel Hill Tunnel for testing in 2004 to develop the G-Force chassis for the Izod IndyCar Series.

“It's not a secret,” Ganassi says. “It's not incumbent upon me to publicize how we test, but it isn't a secret.

“Even if you rent a scale-model rolling road, the models for cars in three different series [IndyCar, NASCAR and Grand-Am] get expensive, and we were getting the most success out of our straight-line [aero] program. My engineers told me, 'We need a drag strip—let's buy an old drag strip or air strip, and if there is still budget we'll build some walls, and if there's more budget we'll put a roof on.' I asked if a tunnel would work and they said, 'maybe better.' And I said, 'Good, because I know where there's a tunnel, so let's see if we can get that.'

“You can work 365 days without worrying about weather, noise or changing conditions,” Ganassi continues. “You build the real piece, not a model. Every team has a tunnel. Ours is just different, maybe more unique. It's the real thing because the heat is in the right places. The temperatures are real, not calculated or simulated.”

Does he own Laurel Hill or lease it from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, or what?

“I'm not sure that's any of your business,” he answers. “I control the tunnel and make it available to other enterprises that can benefit from it.”

And what about the rumor that he's snagging more abandoned turnpike tunnels to keep competitors from getting them?

“Sheesh. . . . I don't have any more tunnels or plans to get them.”

Chip Ganassi, right, has career numbers that rival that of Roger Penske, center.

Indy 500 win makes entire season a success

In an era marked by specialization among both race teams and race drivers, Ganassi, now 54, has countered the trend and expanded from IndyCar to NASCAR to sports cars to junior formulae. He runs multi-car IndyCar and NASCAR Sprint Cup teams, BMW-powered Riley Daytona Prototypes in Grand-Am's Rolex Sports Car Series and the occasional ARCA stock-car entry. He has accumulated 150 wins across those series and 14 season championships.

Ganassi bought into his first race team at 29, or roughly the same age as his role model, one of his heroes and the ever-moving target he tracks: Roger Penske. At 31, Ganassi was sole owner of a Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) entry and running at the Indianapolis 500. Penske began running race teams 25 years before Ganassi, in a different time. His racing enterprises have been even more far-flung, including a serious Formula One effort, and Ganassi humbly suggests that he isn't in RP's league.

He's closer than you might think. Penske collected his 100th race win in his 15th season as an owner; Ganassi did so in his 18th. It took Penske 20 years to reach his 14th championship—Ganassi, 22. Ganassi has also managed a couple significant feats Penske has not. He was the first team owner with four-straight championships in CART and IndyCar, and the only one to win the crown jewels of North American racing: the Daytona 500, the Indianapolis 500, NASCAR's Brickyard 400, and the Rolex 24 at Daytona, all in a 12-month span between 2010 and 2011.

The glaring disparity: While Ganassi ranks second among team owners with four solo Indy 500 wins, his total is just barely more than a quarter of Penske's remarkable 15.

“Of course [I'm flattered to be compared to Penske], but no, I'm not there,” he says. “I need a few more Indy wins.”

Dario Franchitti gave Ganassi a win at Indianapolis in May.

Changing the way teams do business

No one remembers the last time Ganassi Racing made it to the end of May before its first race win in any series. His Sprint Cup team is winless this year and his Grand-Am team, while leading the championship, has not dominated as in recent seasons. An unprecedented fifth-consecutive IndyCar championship is out of reach. Only Team Penske's Will Power and Andretti Autosport's Ryan Hunter-Reay have a legit shot at the title in the upcoming season finale.

Nonetheless, Ganassi will be fine.

“I don't think it's any big story that we were out-engined for the first bunch of [IndyCar] races,” he says. “I think we've shown that when we have equal equipment, we're pretty good. Even when it's unequal, we're pretty good, but good drivers and teams can't make up for a big horsepower deficiency.

“In IndyCar, we made big gains at Indy,” Ganassi continues. “I still don't know if I like where we are, but I know one thing: I'd trade all the wins we didn't get for the one I had Memorial Day.”

Ganassi runs his teams from the bottom up and will take on the role of systems manager, or maybe optimizer.

It's not the good old days

In 1990, the same year Penske Racing began its long affiliation with sponsor Marlboro, Ganassi became a solo CART owner by securing sponsorship from retail giant Target. That relationship—unusual for the time, at best—secured his team's prosperity. Some 23 years later, as Marlboro and other tobacco brands become fading racing memories and many automotive and beer brands are long gone, Ganassi and Target remain happy, affluent partners.

In fairly short order, Ganassi Racing became not only a benchmark among open-wheel teams, but a template. Ganassi ran his team from the bottom up and took the role of systems manager, or maybe optimizer. He allowed Target to help run the team, rather than just write the checks, and was repaid with promotion other outfits only dreamed of. He bought everything he could for his cars off the shelf and preferred not to make a single part if he could get it elsewhere.

Through the 1980s and early '90s, other teams took Ganassi's approach out of financial necessity and didn't win doing it for any length of time. The wealthy, consistently championship-caliber teams manufactured any part they could afford, from wings to cars. The owners, if they were anything more than financiers, kept their hands in everything from hiring drivers to choosing tire compounds.

Ganassi knew he couldn't match the R&D his suppliers undertook, so he didn't bother. His package of Honda engines, Reynard cars and Firestone tires proved to be the setup to beat. It paid off with his first championship in 1996 with Jimmy Vasser, one in the unprecedented streak of four that included Alex Zanardi and Montoya, and it forced Penske to accept the folly in his longstanding practice of building his own cars.

“Chip wants to understand what we do, but he starts from a position of trust, and very seldom does he micro-manage,” says managing director Mike Hull, who has been with Ganassi Racing from the start. “He lets the left guard do the left guard's job, and that isn't an easy thing for someone in his position to do. What upsets him most is when we don't work together.”

Raising money to compete at a high level is an everyday challenge for Ganassi and the rest of the owners at the top levels of the sport. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Ganassi sticks to the business of racing

Success has not given way to Easy Street. Ganassi thinks and works harder than ever, and that's only marginally related to the fact that he has more teams and employees.

“It's way tougher now—tougher raising money, tougher making it, tougher racing,” he says. “More competitive. The recession took a toll on us.

“On the technical side, engineering is everything,” Ganassi continues. “As the rules get tighter, they force teams to become engineering driven. You have to simulate answers because you can't test them. You can't get the answer from your drivers. Off-track testing [such as simulations] is still almost in its infancy, but you're investing way more in that.

“IndyCar is more closed down than NASCAR, in terms of what you can do. But that's when engineering really begins—when the rules get clamped down. That's when you stretch and get creative and dig.”

Unlike Penske, Ganassi has confined his business interests to racing. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

He was better than the average driver

Unlike Penske, who has built a conglomerate famously ranging from one of the world's largest groups of car dealerships to truck rental and logistics to Internet publishing, Ganassi is an empire builder only between the white lines on the track.

“It's been all I do for a long time,” he says. “I don't have dealerships or race tracks anymore. It's all I've got.”

Or maybe all he wants. He was once minority owner in Major League Baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates, and for years Ganassi was listed as a vice president at FRG Group, a closely held umbrella with interests in commercial real estate, building management, transportation and electronics. FRG is Floyd R. Ganassi Sr., who at 85 still roams race paddocks and entertains people in Ganassi's hospitality area. Chip Ganassi earned his degree at Duquesne University in finance and was presumed heir to his father's business interests. But when he climbed out of a race car for the last time, Floyd Jr. had other ideas.

“I'm happy with what I do,” he says.

Ganassi was a top-10 IndyCar driver in his prime.

Ganassi owns the DeltaWing

Like most top-tier racers, Ganassi won his first race by age 12. Only his was a slot-car race. His exploits on slot-car tracks around Pittsburgh first interested him in auto racing, but he didn't win his first auto race—a Formula Ford national at Bridgehampton—until he was 18. He nonetheless had sufficient talent and craft to land a full-time ride in CART by the time he'd graduated from Duquesne in 1982.

Ganassi's driving career spanned five years, mostly with second-tier teams. He made five Indy 500s, with a best start of 11th and a best finish of eighth. He finished a season in CART's top 10 once (1983) and finished second at Cleveland in 1984 (his best race). One round later, Ganassi was involved in one of the spectacular crashes of the '80s.

He cut a tire on the back stretch at Michigan International Speedway, slid into Al Unser Jr., then flew top-first into the inside rail as his car disintegrated around him, suffering a severe concussion, broken sternum and collarbone, and ultimately smoke inhalation from the fire. Ganassi came back for two more seasons when he'd recovered, largely as a point of pride, and finished his career co-driving a Sauber-Mercedes at Le Mans in 1987.

“I wasn't bad,” he says. “Business was what I was trained for, and I had this little diversion for five or six years, but I never really prepared myself to be a professional driver. When I was doing it, I was kind of happy-go-lucky about it. I never thought of it as a career.”

Ganassi owns the DeltWing and its patents.

Ganassi convinced he will win the Sprint Cup

First proposed by longtime Lola designer Ben Bowlby, who was Ganassi Racing's technical director at the time, the dart-shaped DeltaWing is based on a simple concept. With half the weight and aerodynamic drag of state-of-the-art race cars, it theoretically needs only half the horsepower (and energy) to go as fast. The DeltaWing's downforce is generated by its shape and diffuser design, obviating the need for wings. Ganassi ran with it and proposed the DeltaWing as the next IndyCar chassis, but the series chose the more conventional Dallara introduced this year.

Meanwhile, the car caught the attention of former Pittsburgh resident and Duquesne student Don Panoz, who as patron of the American Le Mans Series got the DeltaWing installed in Le Mans' famous Garage 56 for experimental cars. Powered by a 1.5-liter four-cylinder Nissan-branded engine, the DeltaWing ran lap times at Le Mans comparable to the faster LMP2 cars when an encounter with one of the Toyota LMP1 entries knocked it out of this year's race before the sixth hour.

“I'm just a little investor [in the project],” Ganassi says. “We own the car and the patents. If you threw out all the rules, the DeltaWing is something you'd want to try—a place to begin. You get the speed, but you don't need the horsepower.

“Rules makers tend to take efficiency out of racing, and if you can put innovation and efficiency back in, that's a good thing. It's crucial to the future, because young people are different now. When I hit 16, I was looking at my first car as my freedom. Today, 16-year-olds are looking for the next iPhone. We need to give them the next iPhone. We need to show them cars are innovative and green and as big a thrill as ever. You can have innovation and efficiency and still have thrills and freedom.